


Visitation Rights

by Mithen



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Episode Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recovering in the hospital, Jim Gordon has a mysterious visitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitation Rights

**Author's Note:**

>   Happy birthday, [](http://hitokaji.livejournal.com/profile)[**hitokaji**](http://hitokaji.livejournal.com/) !  Yes, I've written a fic based on about 30 seconds of footage.  :)

He is lost in a great wave of pain that blots out words, thoughts, obliterates his very self. After a time with no time, it crests and ebbs, leaving him a fragment of human flotsam on a hospital bed, broken and alone.

Not alone.

There is a figure sitting in front of him, a dark smudge, blurred with pain. Jim tries to squint, to focus, but the motion causes agony to sweep through his body again, graying the edges of his faulty vision even more. He lies still, panting slightly, feeling the pain receding, waiting for its next assault.

The figure is speaking, a low grate, almost soothingly monotonous. Familiar. The words brush past him like shadows, fleeting and ephemeral: Jim might have heard "alone," might have heard "sorry," but nothing is solid except for one word, the one word like a stone in the void, looming from the mist to break Jim once more.

 _Never._

 _Never._

 _Never._

 _Never again._

He speaks to that word, lets the pain speak through him. "We were in this together. And then you were gone." The last word seems to come out wet with blood. There is a hiss of indrawn breath nearby: he doesn't think it's his own. The dark figure before him is still, a carved shape, a graven image. Jim whispers to it like a prayer. "The Batman must come back."

A pause. When the man in front of him speaks again, the rasping snarl is gone and in its place is the voice of a mere man, young and unsure and alone. A familiar voice. "What if he doesn't exist anymore?"

Jim's heart aches at the thought of putting more weight on that so-human voice, but the words break from him, pitiless as the night: "He _must._."

As if the words are a signal, the pain rushes across him again, a vast red anguish that wipes out the room and the figure within it, tosses him like a scrap of paper on a gale, helpless and lorn.

When his vision clears again, the figure in front of him is gone.

He hears his own ragged breath echoing in the empty room as he stares at the empty space, wondering if it was nothing but a drugged delusion, born of pain and despair.

From behind him, a stir of air. Jim feels a hand touch his hair, tentative and uncertain. "Jim," whispers that new, familiar voice that has all the strength of Batman's, all the vulnerability of a very human being. Something brushes his skin just below the ear, a gentle caress like a promise.

And then the presence is gone and Jim is alone once more.

The agony threatens to surge again, but Jim closes his eyes and recalls the voice, the touch, and anguish recedes like a long wave, leaving him unscathed. He takes a long breath. There will be pain in the future--there is always pain--but he knows now it will not break him.

The room is empty, but he's not alone.


End file.
